Disney wants a piece of Major League Baseball's streaming media magic.

Mari Silbey, Senior Editor, Cable/Video

July 1, 2016

1 Min Read
Disney Deals $3.5B for MLBAM Stake – Report

Major League Baseball was an early adopter of streaming media, with the league's 30 team owners backing MLB.com and funding the start of MLB's Advanced Media (MLBAM) business back in the year 2000.

Today, those initial investments are paying spectacular dividends.

According to a report by Bloomberg, Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS) is preparing to take a 33% stake in MLBAM in a deal worth roughly $3.5 billion. In addition, Bloomberg reports that Disney is negotiating an option to acquire a further 33% of MLBAM within four years, an investment that would enable Disney to carve out a significant role for itself in the video streaming market.

Figure 1:

MLBAM doesn't only support online streaming for Major League Baseball games. It also helps to power streaming applications for many other sports and entertainment services, including HBO Now, the WWE Network and Disney's own WatchESPN. The company's offerings include strategic business and content consulting, user experience and product design, and digital marketing. (See also IP Video Services Explode at IBC.)

As evidence of MLBAM's success, Major League Baseball reported that fans averaged 71.4 million minutes and 10.4 million unique sessions per day of live media consumption through MLB.TV and the MLB.com At Bat app during the 2015 regular season. Forbes reports that MLBAM is projected to top $1 billion in revenue for 2016.

— Mari Silbey, Senior Editor, Cable/Video, Light Reading

About the Author(s)

Mari Silbey

Senior Editor, Cable/Video

Mari Silbey is a senior editor covering broadband infrastructure, video delivery, smart cities and all things cable. Previously, she worked independently for nearly a decade, contributing to trade publications, authoring custom research reports and consulting for a variety of corporate and association clients. Among her storied (and sometimes dubious) achievements, Mari launched the corporate blog for Motorola's Home division way back in 2007, ran a content development program for Limelight Networks and did her best to entertain the video nerd masses as a long-time columnist for the media blog Zatz Not Funny. She is based in Washington, D.C.

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